Naked Humanity

Join Stefani in a smart, fast-paced, and passionate conversation with James Hill Jr., who studies the industry of creating holographic images of deceased black recording artists. Learn all about the world of bringing musicians back from the dead, and also Colin Kaepernick, black culture in America, censorship, and more.

Frustrated with the debate on political correctness, I discuss what I perceive to be common blind spots on both the right and the left. I take the common ‘left’ view that taking care of others and deconstructing discriminatory norms is important but argue A) that care must be understood in context and B) that the policing of language is not always productive.

Today’s topics: free speech, religious freedom, the decline of civility, and the culture of WINNING in the age of the Trump. What’s wrong with American political discourse today? How did we end up like this? I chat with expert in American religion and politics Finbarr Curtis to get to the bottom of it.

Do you have a purpose in life? Maybe! In today’s episode I take a look at the history of cultural factors that make Westerners feel like we need to find a “purpose” -- and why it might all be wrong.

Can anyone become less racist? Can we teach people how to treat each other better? I was amazed to learn about the uniquely effective way of tackling racism and various injustices my guests Christopher Carter and Seth Schoen have created. Have they found the secret to something that actually works?

They often call us “Generation Me.” We are the generation that is selfish, narcissistic, and obsessed with getting Facebook likes. But why? Why are we this way? In this brief episode, I talk about the history of the West and the deep underlying fears that cause us to be so obsessed with our own image. (Note: narcissism here is used in the colloquial and not clinical sense.)

We usually think of religion as something that makes us good--but what happens when religion is something that enables us to be bad? In this eye-opening episode Professor Christopher Driscoll makes the unusual and important observation that the Western God acts as a buffer against limitations for white people. That is, it makes it easier for white people to marginalize and commit violence against everybody else. Tune in to take a hard look at yourself and your neighbors. We discuss lynching, drone strikes, Trump, Kendrick Lamar, and more.

We tend to radically over-simplify religions. This is especially the case with Christianity, which we often think of as being about irrational faith in a supernatural God. But it really isn’t--at least the majority of it  isn’t--and it never has been. In this episode I trace some of the long lineage of Christian thinkers in history who thought it was actually impossible to understand anything about God.

We often talk about science like it’s going to deliver us final and certain answers--but is that really how it works? In this mind-blowing episode I chat with theoretical physicist and several times best-selling author Marcelo Gleiser about the open-endedness, adventure, and majesty of the scientific quest. Gleiser tells us how he ditched his intellectual comfort zones, why he has such a different view of science from other famous scientists, and how personal tragedy led him to experience the unknown as beautiful.

In the last episode we established that “human nature” changes over time--in this episode Stefani shows you how. By briefly touring early hunter-gathering, the development of agriculture, early Christianity, the Enlightenment, Darwinism, fundamentalism, and the World Wars, Stefani demonstrates just how vastly our ideas of what it means to be human have changed--and not always for the better.